Los clérigos medievales, que no han de confundirse con los sacerdotes o los monjes, son los descendientes de un linaje original en el mundo urbano medieval de Occidente. Encarnan la tradición de los intelectuales. Aunque la palabra es moderna, designa acertadamente esa múltiple función del clérigo que desempeñaba los papeles de pensador y docente, de transmisor de tradiciones literarias o de editor y productor de textos en el sentido material del término. La investigación de Jacques Le Goff es una introducción a la historia social del intelectual medieval en Occidente. Al atender aspectos singulares y muy diversos, este estudio se convierte en una galería de presentación de caracteres finamente analizados. El autor explora el rico mundo cultural y espiritual de Chartres, de las universidades, de la vida laboral que incluye actividades como el traducir y el copiar textos. Nos habla de figuras genéricas como los «vagabundos intelectuales» y de personas tan concretas como Abelardo y Eloísa. Los distintos aspectos se combinan en un fascinante panorama que permite conocer muchos detalles sorprendentes de la vida cotidiana medieval. Este texto ya clásico ha sido revisado y actualizado a fondo, y se ha puesto al día la bibliografía de las investigaciones posteriores sobre el tema, en buena medida inspiradas en la labor pionera de Jacques Le Goff mismo.

In this pioneering work Jacques Le Goff examines both the creation of the medieval universities in the great cities of the European High Middle Ages, and the linked origins of the intellectuals - the first Europeans since the Classic Age to owe their livelihoods to their teaching and accumulation of knowledge. The author's argument is that the intellectuals, Abelard most typically, were a new category of person (neither monk nor knight) with a new method (scholastic dialectic) and a new objective (knowledge for its own sake). For the first time in Spain, France, England and Germany the luxury of thinking and learning ceased to be the limited preserve of the higher echelons of the Church and the Court. The effect, the author shows, was to bring about an irreversible shift in European culture. This intellectual history of medieval Europe (translated from the revised French edition of 1984) will be widely welcomed by students and scholars of the Middle Ages throughout the English-speaking world.

Essays on medieval history inspired by, and engaging with, the work of Jacques Le Goff. The essays in this volume arise from the proceedings of a conference held in 1994 to celebrate the life and work of the eminent French medievalist Jacques Le Goff. Set within thematic sections -popular religion and heresy, the body, royalty andits mystique, intellectuals in medieval society, and others -many of the challenges raised by Le Goff are reassessed and reapproached. There is an explicit historiographical focus in a section on the reception and influence of Le Goff, with particular reference to the Annales school of history with which he is strongly identified; the volume also indicates the problems which animate current research in medieval studies, especially in certain areas of social and cultural history. MIRI RUBIN is Professor of History, Queen Mary, University of London. Contributors: ALEXANDER MURRAY, PETER BILLER, ANDRÉ VAUCHEZ, R.I. MOORE, OTTO GERHARD OEXLE, LESTER K. LITTLE, WALTER SIMONS, ADELINE RUCQUOI, ALAIN BOUREAU, JEAN DUBABIN, WILLIAM CHESTER JORDAN, PETER LINEHAN, MIRI RUBIN, GABOR KLANICZAY, AARON GUREVICH, ROBIN BRIGGS, STUART CLARK